For years, the Washington Capitals have consistently outperformed the expectations of statistical models, as their goal scoring talent elevated the team above expectations. This season, the models seemed to like the team’s offseason moves, only for the team to be sellers at the trade deadline.
HockeyViz’s model gave the Caps a 27% chance to win the Metro division at the start of the season and projected them to finish second in the league behind Tampa Bay. Dom Luszczyszyn’s model for The Athletic was a little more pessimistic, but it still had the Capitals likely to finish third in the division, but with a 71% chance to make the playoffs.
After years of under predicting the team, this year the team underachieved. So where did the Caps underachieve?
“I thought [Darcy] Kuemper was a strong add,” Luszczyszyn said. “I thought they had enough depth to survive the early injuries to [Nicklas] Backstrom and [Tom] Wilson. I thought they should have been fine.”
The biggest issue for the Caps this season is the inability to stay healthy. Outside of the preseason injuries to Backstrom andWilson, who were expected to miss significant amount of time, but the team has also missed the services of John Carlson and Dmitry Orlov who missed extensive time with injuries.
Luszczyszyn’s model projected John Carlson to have a game score value of 2.9. At the time of this piece he his well below that at a GSVA of just 0.8 largely based on him playing just 33 games this season. Game score value added, or GSVA, is an attempt at a “catch-all” statistic combining traditional statistics, possession numbers as well as how the player impacts events at both ends of the ice while taking into account the difficulty of minutes played. For example, a player like Boston’s Patrice Bergeron will have a higher GSVA because of his defensive impacts than Ovechkin, despite Ovechkin having more points.
Luszczyszyn believes Carlson’s absence has had a larger impact on the Caps than most people could have seen.
“I think Carlson being injured is a big thing that plays a big role here,” Luszczyszyn said.
Another issue for the team that has been evident throughout the season is the inability to score consistently. The culprit hasn’t been depth,, but rather the star players.
Alex Ovechkin has been himself scoring 33 goals and 57 points in 58 games, but he has been the only one consistently producing. No other player on the team has more than 15 goals. TJ Oshie, who missed time with injuries has just 27 points in 45 games. While that surpasses last season’s total of 25 points in 44 games, it is far off the 43 points in 53 games Oshie had during the COVID shortened 2020-21 season. Evgeny Kuznetsov has 50 points in 62 games, well off his near point-per-game pace (78 points in 79 games) last season. Dylan Strome (13-27–40) and Conor Sheary (12-18–30) are the only other forwards with more than 30 points. On the backend, only Erik Gustafsson (7-31–38) had more than 25 points.
“Sometimes I forget Anthony Mantha exists,” Luszczyszyn said jokingly. “I figured he’d at least be a second line caliber player and he has fallen off.” Luszczyszyn added the Kuznetsov is on a “rollercoaster” trajectory, constantly bouncing between good and bad seasons.
While the Caps stars didn’t show, their depth played their part. Garnet Hathaway scored nine goals and added seven assists, while Sonny Milano, Nic Dowd and Marcus Johansson all scored double digit goals. Johansson was third on the team in goals at the time of his trade to Minnesota.
Another issue, Luszczyszyn saw with the team is having too many forwards. The Caps have had consistently inconsistent lineups, sometimes leaving talented players as healthy scratches (Strome) and the constant line shifts have hindered players’ ability to build chemistry.
One factor the Caps have had no control over is the change in the conference.
Last season, the Caps were the last wild card team, but were 16 points ahead of the next team. For them to have missed, they would’ve needed to be significantly worse, and for teams below them to get significantly better. Both have happened as the New Jersey Devils, Detroit Red Wings, Buffalo Sabres and Ottawa Senators have all significantly improved. The Devils are fighting to win the Metro division while Detroit has stayed in the race before selling at the deadline. Ottawa and Buffalo have bought and are making a playoff push.
“Every year that gap will close between the younger teams and the older teams. Those [four] east teams were bound to get a little better and Washington was bound to get a little worse. Maybe that gap shrunk a lot quicker than any of those teams could have imagined.”
In The Athletic’s season preview it stated that “one of the biggest rivalries in the game right now” is between Luszczyszyn’s model and the Caps. Whether or not that continues next year will likely depend on how much younger the Caps can get in the off-season and if their star players can once again stem the tide of Father Time.
